Oh hey I’m AFAB but more or less NB at this point and let my gender presentation flux with both people’s perceptions and whatever seems to be working best in the moment, especially career-wise so I actually have a LOT of thoughts on this. A looot of this discusses societal stereotypes on gender, so while I think it’s shitty, the fact that a lot of people (wrongly) perceive trans people as their birth sex is of relevance to my perspective on this discussion. So, trigger warning: prejudice / transphobia.
Background:
I’m AFAB so most of my upbringing was femme oriented
I also come from an autism / ADHD HEAVY family so I still missed some of the social aspects of gendered upbringing
my parents WERE fundies however, so my attempts at more feminine presentations (makeup, heels, etc) resulted in a lot of sex-shaming from my parents, but there was also a looot of pro-birther nonsense and everything about pregnancy just freaks me out. There’s probably a looot to unpack there as to how I wound up nonbinary, but ultimately I am what I am now, so it is what it is.
I spent the first few years of my career working on a psych unit for criminally insane men so the formative years of my young adulthood were spent learning how to speak from my chest and not look like a target
my current presentation is that sort of “no gendered features” / look like a clean shaven young man / lesbian (vs the beard AND boobs / “aaaall the gendered features” look). The only surgery I’ve had is my tits chopped off + tubes out. So I don’t look ooobviously trans, but a lot of people also can’t really tell what genitals I have at a glance which some people find …distressing. for some reason.
I’m also white which I think lets me “get away with more” than others.
Thoughts:
I usually use the women’s bathroom. Sometimes I bring a she-wee to work but all the unit bathrooms are singles so it’s more just because I work with animals (male and female) who don’t know how to put the seat up when they pee standing / squatting. This is mostly because whether it’s reality or trauma based (see above work history) I don’t trust most men around me with my pants off vs women will be socially awful but I likely won’t have to come to blows over it. I do get some weird looks though, and some have stopped me, but then they just get this really confused / uncomfortable expression and ultimately leave me alone. But as far as your question goes, I do think I would get less backlash as a AFAB going into the men’s room than an AMAB gets doing the reverse, so there’s definitely an aspect of my vagina being inherently less threatening in vulnerable contexts… somehow?
patient care: I work high-acuity psych so every patient has to have their skin checked for injuries and contraband (particularly weapons). I usually count as female for the purposes of keeping things same-sex. As far as your specific question though, it’s also usually fine for me to count as female when searching men, even if the other person is also a woman. I usually try to have a male staff member with me as well, but nursing is pretty female dominated and I’ve noticed both in terms of patient comfort and working policy, two women searching a man is NOT as frowned upon as two men searching a woman. Do with that what you will. Same also goes for care / cleaning of genitals / breasts when patients require that.
In terms of responding to violent patients: it depends and I’ll change my demeanor as needed. If a patient seems like they’ll respect a man more I’ll stand taller, drop the pitch of my voice / speak from the chest, and be more directive. If I think they’ll respond better to me being more gentle / nurturing I’ll do that (although I’m not as good at it) but again as far as your question goes, I don’t think an AMAB person would be trusted the same way were they witnessed going back and forth that.
I guess my ultimate statement on it is thus: my particular combination of transness (including my race) is highly favorable considering, and I’ve heard that’s often true for transmascs which I think is highly reflective of societal prejudices based on birth sex. I still get the weird looks and called mean names, but I’m sitting in exactly the least taboo combination where most people can assuage their prejudices by categorizing me as a “tomboy.” People also often assume I’m a lesbian which is a little less favorable, but much more favorable than being trans (which is closer to the truth, I actually tend to prefer men).
I’ve actually arguably been able to use my gender presentation to avoid violence in many cases, which almost universally cannot be said for transwomen or men or other AMABs who find themselves with any kind of femme aspects in their gender presentation. I’m also fortunate that the dysphoria I did have tended towards removing gendered aspects vs adding them because that also gets a lot of backlash.
Anyway that’s my garbled post 12-hour-night-shift stream of consciousness. Hope it was interesting!
I don’t have anything productive to respond, althogh I do have a single, very important question:
HOW did you write this entire thing in the bus?! Using a laptop in a bus is (for me) just extremely uncomfortable but if you typed this entire thing on the phone your bus ride must have been 2 hours or so
Excessive overnight caffeine intake and adhd hyperfocus. Part of it was also before the bus arrived since I get out of work riiight after the previous bus leaves and have to wait 30min for the next one with nothing better to do.
I also do a lot of stuff like this so I’ve gotten pretty quick on my swype keyboard.
You should see my nursing notes when the bullshit happens. I’ve gotten a lot of praise for the amount of detail I add to explain why I had to do whatever I had to do to get a situation back under control.
I’m an AFAB egg and I heavily relate to a lot of that. I come off some sort of way to people (I’m also 178 cm, but only 62kg, so I’m tall but not big, maybe that’s related), such that people don’t interrupt me, take credit for my ideas, mansplain to me… I actually experience very little in terms of individual (vs institutional) sexism, and I don’t know how to phrase that without it seeming like victim blaming. People don’t even catcall me anymore, but I may have just aged out of it
I always wanted to be an interesting person when I grew up but now I’m here I rarely find it fulfilling. It turns out 98% of the things that result in an interesting person are highly unpleasant to do or experience.
Fair enough, me and my family been going through a lot of that recently and while I think it’ll be worthwhile in the end, the process is quite hellish. No pain no gain I guess.
AFAB = assigned female at birth; basically because they happened to have a vagina at birth, so they were supposed to like pink and dolls and a lower paycheck and whatever else society has decided the female experience should be like.
AMAB = assigned male at birth
NB = non-binary; a person that identifies neither as male nor as female. They might be something in the middle, or they might be something completely different.
femme = basically the way women have traditionally looked or behaved (long hair, pink etc.)
fundie = fundamentalist Christian; basically very conservative, very eccentric people with world views they claim to be traditionally Christian
bussy = boy pussy; the anus of a man, or it may also be used to describe the vagina of a transmasc person
transmasc = transmasculine; a person who was assigned female at birth, but who rather identifies with masculinity and may have taken measures to be perceived as such (clothing, hormones, surgery etc.)
The short version is, as a pseudo-trans person, being born female makes a lot of it ok to most people. People born male who act more female get a looooot of backlash.
Very thorough and great answer, I’m curious though – what’s a she-wee? Is that the tool for peeing standing up when one isn’t born with the sausage?
Also, that coworker sounds affirming, when he told he thought that it doesn’t count as going after women - that’s kind of oddly sweet?
I also have a lack of omnipresent(?) dysphoria, though do have a bit there and there. Mainly not having the right organ down there and having too much hair, but other than that, it’s pretty much alright.
In a way it is. Im moderately muscular and I present masc, I don’t like to most of the time but it keeps assholes in their place. I wish I didn’t need to do it. Then when I present more feminine it’s like a completely different social reality.
Bigot lol that’s funny though. You don’t even know me or how far off you are. My comment had literally 0 to do with the content, but go ahead make your judgments it’s really ok. Same response: nobody cares.
I LOVE comments like this from people who clearly cared enough about what I said to interact with my comment TWICE in two different ways (downvote PLUS comment) JUST to try to convince me they don’t care, and right below another commenter who has emphatically expressed the opposite. It’s fascinating both in the sense that they might actually internally believe it AND that they’re deluded enough to think I might as well.
That’s a fascinating write up, thank you for sharing! I don’t think we hear about transmasc or transnb (?) nearly as often as transfem for exactly the stupid social stuff you mentioned.
Oh hey I’m AFAB but more or less NB at this point and let my gender presentation flux with both people’s perceptions and whatever seems to be working best in the moment, especially career-wise so I actually have a LOT of thoughts on this. A looot of this discusses societal stereotypes on gender, so while I think it’s shitty, the fact that a lot of people (wrongly) perceive trans people as their birth sex is of relevance to my perspective on this discussion. So, trigger warning: prejudice / transphobia.
Background:
I’m AFAB so most of my upbringing was femme oriented
I also come from an autism / ADHD HEAVY family so I still missed some of the social aspects of gendered upbringing
my parents WERE fundies however, so my attempts at more feminine presentations (makeup, heels, etc) resulted in a lot of sex-shaming from my parents, but there was also a looot of pro-birther nonsense and everything about pregnancy just freaks me out. There’s probably a looot to unpack there as to how I wound up nonbinary, but ultimately I am what I am now, so it is what it is.
I spent the first few years of my career working on a psych unit for criminally insane men so the formative years of my young adulthood were spent learning how to speak from my chest and not look like a target
my current presentation is that sort of “no gendered features” / look like a clean shaven young man / lesbian (vs the beard AND boobs / “aaaall the gendered features” look). The only surgery I’ve had is my tits chopped off + tubes out. So I don’t look ooobviously trans, but a lot of people also can’t really tell what genitals I have at a glance which some people find …distressing. for some reason.
I’m also white which I think lets me “get away with more” than others.
Thoughts:
I usually use the women’s bathroom. Sometimes I bring a she-wee to work but all the unit bathrooms are singles so it’s more just because I work with animals (male and female) who don’t know how to put the seat up when they pee standing / squatting. This is mostly because whether it’s reality or trauma based (see above work history) I don’t trust most men around me with my pants off vs women will be socially awful but I likely won’t have to come to blows over it. I do get some weird looks though, and some have stopped me, but then they just get this really confused / uncomfortable expression and ultimately leave me alone. But as far as your question goes, I do think I would get less backlash as a AFAB going into the men’s room than an AMAB gets doing the reverse, so there’s definitely an aspect of my vagina being inherently less threatening in vulnerable contexts… somehow?
patient care: I work high-acuity psych so every patient has to have their skin checked for injuries and contraband (particularly weapons). I usually count as female for the purposes of keeping things same-sex. As far as your specific question though, it’s also usually fine for me to count as female when searching men, even if the other person is also a woman. I usually try to have a male staff member with me as well, but nursing is pretty female dominated and I’ve noticed both in terms of patient comfort and working policy, two women searching a man is NOT as frowned upon as two men searching a woman. Do with that what you will. Same also goes for care / cleaning of genitals / breasts when patients require that.
In terms of responding to violent patients: it depends and I’ll change my demeanor as needed. If a patient seems like they’ll respect a man more I’ll stand taller, drop the pitch of my voice / speak from the chest, and be more directive. If I think they’ll respond better to me being more gentle / nurturing I’ll do that (although I’m not as good at it) but again as far as your question goes, I don’t think an AMAB person would be trusted the same way were they witnessed going back and forth that.
I guess my ultimate statement on it is thus: my particular combination of transness (including my race) is highly favorable considering, and I’ve heard that’s often true for transmascs which I think is highly reflective of societal prejudices based on birth sex. I still get the weird looks and called mean names, but I’m sitting in exactly the least taboo combination where most people can assuage their prejudices by categorizing me as a “tomboy.” People also often assume I’m a lesbian which is a little less favorable, but much more favorable than being trans (which is closer to the truth, I actually tend to prefer men).
I’ve actually arguably been able to use my gender presentation to avoid violence in many cases, which almost universally cannot be said for transwomen or men or other AMABs who find themselves with any kind of femme aspects in their gender presentation. I’m also fortunate that the dysphoria I did have tended towards removing gendered aspects vs adding them because that also gets a lot of backlash.
Anyway that’s my garbled post 12-hour-night-shift stream of consciousness. Hope it was interesting!
I don’t have anything productive to respond, althogh I do have a single, very important question:
HOW did you write this entire thing in the bus?! Using a laptop in a bus is (for me) just extremely uncomfortable but if you typed this entire thing on the phone your bus ride must have been 2 hours or so
Excessive overnight caffeine intake and adhd hyperfocus. Part of it was also before the bus arrived since I get out of work riiight after the previous bus leaves and have to wait 30min for the next one with nothing better to do.
I also do a lot of stuff like this so I’ve gotten pretty quick on my swype keyboard.
You should see my nursing notes when the bullshit happens. I’ve gotten a lot of praise for the amount of detail I add to explain why I had to do whatever I had to do to get a situation back under control.
I’m an AFAB egg and I heavily relate to a lot of that. I come off some sort of way to people (I’m also 178 cm, but only 62kg, so I’m tall but not big, maybe that’s related), such that people don’t interrupt me, take credit for my ideas, mansplain to me… I actually experience very little in terms of individual (vs institutional) sexism, and I don’t know how to phrase that without it seeming like victim blaming. People don’t even catcall me anymore, but I may have just aged out of it
You’re a really cool person. Very few have a story this interesting, wish there were more like you in the world
I always wanted to be an interesting person when I grew up but now I’m here I rarely find it fulfilling. It turns out 98% of the things that result in an interesting person are highly unpleasant to do or experience.
Fair enough, me and my family been going through a lot of that recently and while I think it’ll be worthwhile in the end, the process is quite hellish. No pain no gain I guess.
NGL I’m don’t understand most of the acronyms you wrote and even some of the words you used. I’m too old and 3rd world educated for your post.
This was super helpful. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Jesus
He left a while back. Anything one of us can help you with?
The short version is, as a pseudo-trans person, being born female makes a lot of it ok to most people. People born male who act more female get a looooot of backlash.
I was in the same boat as OP, so thanks for the clarification. Your post was enlightening.
that’s a looot of words
Very thorough and great answer, I’m curious though – what’s a she-wee? Is that the tool for peeing standing up when one isn’t born with the sausage?
Also, that coworker sounds affirming, when he told he thought that it doesn’t count as going after women - that’s kind of oddly sweet?
I also have a lack of omnipresent(?) dysphoria, though do have a bit there and there. Mainly not having the right organ down there and having too much hair, but other than that, it’s pretty much alright.
Thank you for sharing all this! This has been one of the most interesting posts I’ve come across in a long time.
I’d never considered this before, but the flexiblity that you get from ambivalence is almost like a social superpower - that’s really cool!
In a way it is. Im moderately muscular and I present masc, I don’t like to most of the time but it keeps assholes in their place. I wish I didn’t need to do it. Then when I present more feminine it’s like a completely different social reality.
Nobody cares.
It’s an interesting and detailed post.
I think it has brought a lot to the table.
What did your comment bring?
It’s called sarcasm.
Yes, you seemed very sarcastic in your reasonable and not at all defensive responses to other people.
Nobody cares.
I care
Alright.
No, we do care. What we don’t care for is the opinion of a fucking stupid bigot like you. Please do us all a favor and leave the topic entirely.
You got it, chief.
Bigot lol that’s funny though. You don’t even know me or how far off you are. My comment had literally 0 to do with the content, but go ahead make your judgments it’s really ok. Same response: nobody cares.
Bigot or asshole. Either way, thanks for identifying yourself as someone only worth ignoring.
Yes and a great demonstration of ignoring me thus far. Well done.
I wanted you to see the message before I blocked. Sad you cannot realize that’s all you’re good for.
Oh no! An ignorant stranger doesn’t like me! How will I cope?
Grow up.
Acts like a bratty thirteen year old, tells other people to grow up.
I LOVE comments like this from people who clearly cared enough about what I said to interact with my comment TWICE in two different ways (downvote PLUS comment) JUST to try to convince me they don’t care, and right below another commenter who has emphatically expressed the opposite. It’s fascinating both in the sense that they might actually internally believe it AND that they’re deluded enough to think I might as well.
hey, amab masc nb person here, i appreciated your write up, thought it was interesting, and cared.
That’s a fascinating write up, thank you for sharing! I don’t think we hear about transmasc or transnb (?) nearly as often as transfem for exactly the stupid social stuff you mentioned.